Poetry: The language to express feelings

In 1999 UNESCO declared March 21 to be World Poetry Day. This celebration has made me reflect about the use of poems in my lessons to motivate students to learn Spanish, to help them develop their creativity and to enrich my daily teaching.

Poetry can be a very powerful resource to teach languages as it connects directly to our feelings and emotions. Poetry encourages abstract and critical thinking. Furthermore, each verse can mean different things for different students depending on their background, so it promotes communication, empathy and understanding with others.

When looking at poetry, one can find a variety of poems, however, in teaching modern languages they can be seen as under-exploited resources because they need additional preparation time to be incorporated in lessons.

Why should we include poetry in lessons?

Poetry is a universal language that is used to express feelings, doubts, worries and different values. Nowadays we live in a multicultural society, and we can use poems to connect with others, to foster pupils’ inspiration and to share different viewpoints to broaden students’ horizons. Teaching languages goes beyond teaching grammar and a set of vocabulary needed to pass exams. Students should be exposed to use their second language to talk about their own interests and poetry allows this as it offers freedom and flexibility of vocabulary.

Poetry has the gift of exposing pupils to words that they can manipulate. This has a positive impact on teaching and learning as poetry makes students exercise their minds more while gradually developing and enriching their vocabulary. It also develops students’ curiosity as poets often use beautiful and elegant words in their verses.

When searching for resources to write this blog, I came across webinars by Diego Ojeda, a teacher who has written several poetry books about what he called “Poesía comprensible” which is poetry that has been written using vocabulary and topics that students learn at school to ensure pupils understand it.

Ojeda, who is a blogger, an author and a teacher trainer is also a pioneer in using poetry with his students in Kentucky USA. Next, I will discuss his experience and include some of his examples regarding how to use poems in lessons.

What type of poetry should we use?

· Students do not aim to become language theory students; they want to speak the language to communicate effectively in an easy and friendly way. Ojeda suggests choosing poems that are related to the interests and concerns that students may have experienced. What students really aspire is to be effective users of a foreign language, they want to be able to understand oral and written messages as well as to reproduce them and ultimately to communicate in the new language and poetry can help them to achieve this.

· Select poems that talk about topics that students value and enjoy. This helps students to connect to the content straight away, and keep them motivated and excited rather than bored and passive.

· Choose topics that allow students to work in groups. This promotes interaction and discussions regarding if they see the world in the same or in a different way helping them to consider and value other views.

· Ultimately, we teach a syllabus so it important to pick poems that address the topics that we need to cover in the specifications, poems that allows to build community while teaching the curriculum.

How to use the poems?

I attended one webinar with Ojeda and watched others from his website. Ojeda in a creative way shares his knowledge and expertise regarding how to use poetry in lessons. These are some examples of the kind of activities that can be used with students.

Activity one: Give pupils part of the poem and ask them to write the end in groups. Everyone would be surprised with the endings!

Activity two: Divide a poem in words and ask pupils to write their own poem using that particular vocabulary. Celebrate students’ work!

Activity three: Remove words from a poem and ask students to complete it freely, using their own words. Praise creativity!

Activity four: Remove words from the poem and ask students to fill in the missing gaps in a coherent way.

Activity five: Give students a poem and ask them to modify it by changing the verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc.

Activity six: Mix the verses of a poem and ask pupils to organise it in a logical and coherent way. Be prepared to see different versions followed by a good discussion regarding why they have organised it in that particular manner to show different messages.

Activity seven: Mix two fragments or two poems and ask students to separate them.

Activity eight: Give students a poem in the first person and ask them to write it in the third person.

Activity nine: Link poetry with literacy. Pick a theme for the lesson related to the topic pupils are studying. This will allow them to concentrate on concrete details and ideas in their writing. Depending on the theme, you can use different visual resources to inspire students. Use different literary figures to encourage creativity and give pupils an example: simile, personification, metaphor, hyperbole, anaphora, alliteration, antithesis, etc. and ask them to write a verse using the model given.

Using simile (when teaching a topic using comparatives -como, tal como, igual que, etc.) Example of simile: “Tus ojos son como dos estrellas.” Ask students to use this verse to write their own one.

Using hyperbole: In Spanish we have lots of expressions to exaggerate hence hyperboles are good as students can exaggerate as much as they want when writing a verse. Example: “Eres lo más hermoso que ha creado el universo.” Ask students to use this verse to write their own one.

Activity ten: Choose a poem with several difficult sounds and model pronunciation by reading the poem several times and asking students to repeat the verses. You can focus on individual sounds and you can then record students saying the poem to raise awareness of accurate pronunciation.

Activity eleven: Find a poem that contains a dialogue and organise a role play and ask students to perform it.

Activity twelve: Choose a poem, read it with the correct intonation and use it as a dictation activity.

Activity thirteen: Rhyming game. Give students a word, it can be a verb in the infinitive, ask pupils to find words that rhyme with the given word and then they can use these words to write verses.

Activity fourteen: Produce a collective poem. Each pupil adds a word or an expression to construct verses.

Activity fifteen: Choose a topic and select a good range of images. Ask students to write verses using the images.

Activity sixteen: Chain word game. Give students a word, for instance “naranja” then ask students to find words that end in -a or -ja. Use these words to write verses. Another alternative is that the next word begins with the syllable of the previous word to establish links, for instance naranja – jardín.

Activity seventeen: Riddle. Read a poem that describes an object and ask students to have a guess what the object is.

Activity eighteen: Create a poem using another poem. Students can change words as well as create their own structure.

Activity nineteen: Choose a topic and ask students to do research and collect poems related to that topic that have been written by famous poets. Then as a class, pupils can discuss vocabulary and expressions that they have in common.

Activity twenty: Corpse poem. Each student writes a line without knowing what the others have written, then all lines are collected and a poem is organised.

I do believe that there is room for poetry when teaching modern languages. It is a matter of starting to include verses in our planning and producing and sharing resources with others to make the job manageable and rewarding.